Re: Libré Software universities? (USA or Canada)
Where is out here? There are universities that use UNIX platforms, and
most of these have GNU software.
For what it is worth, I was on Faculty at a State University in Charlotte,
North Carolina (that should be specific enough) for ten years in the
engineering school. They had built a remarkably large network based on
sun-solaris boxes running afs. I chaired the computer committee and saw,
first hand, how a fearful faculty can destroy innovation. The standard
complaint was the the unix was not preparing our students for the working
world. Of course this was nonsense. But the consistent complaining led to
the introduction of large NT labs at the expense of the UNIX side.
We had a system admin in CS that put together a really beautiful lab
filled with Linux boxes (yes, debian) that were connected to sun servers.
The result was very inexpensive machines that ran the sun-based
applications like FrameMaker faster than the sun boxes did and were dual
boot to satisfy the NT-weenies. However, the sitting faculty seemed not up
to the task of learning how to use them, so the idea never left the CS
department.
At any rate, I'm fairly sure that you could use free software in any of
the really valuable CS courses there.
Arthur H. Edwards
712 Valencia Dr. NE
Abq. NM 87108
(505) 256-0834
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